Wildfire

Reg Steward, Beef in BC, 20 September 2017

There has and will be much said about the fires that are causing havoc and ravaging much of the countryside. There will be many discussions and many reflections when we look back, and we will look back, amid a winter that will come. At that time, how we have done, how we have conducted ourselves as the ranching community will be a big part of that discussion. There will be much finger pointing, there will be questions about who or what helped, what did not.

There will be a desire to know who roadblocked (literally), who facilitated and what specifically was effective and empowering or enabling for the ranching community. There are long days out there and long days in the Emergency Operations Centre. It has been encouraging and of great value to see provincial ministries, ranchers, the BCCA, AgSafe and each one of you cooperating and finding ways to get through this. Great help has come from several key provincial ministries and their people like Sonya Campbell and Brent Barclay and many others. With great zeal and energy and long days and nights Kevin Boon and his team were able to secure a seat in the Cariboo Regional District E.O.C. and effectively set the stage to establish a method of change and a voice for producers in that arena. We have found ways to say “I can fix that” or “we can get that done”, rather than the difficult to hear and at times ridiculous responses that we provided to ranchers in the early going of this major crisis.